Budget 2018: Building a new India leveraging improved human capital

The Hon’ble Finance Minister in his budget speech announced India’s aspiration of becoming the 5th largest global economy and cited the structural reforms and other initiatives undertaken as part of this journey. A key area of focus towards fulfilling this aspiration is ensuring that we have the required quality of human capital, which is an essential factor for driving such growth.

Today, the quality of education has emerged as a serious concern based on the findings of the recently conducted national survey on learning outcomes. A significant proportion of students across the country were found to fall short of the desired benchmark levels. Accordingly, this year’s budget has focused on addressing this concern through various initiatives and measures.

HIGHLIGHTS OF BUDGET 2018:
Key amongst these, as stated by the Hon’ble Minister as moving from Blackboard to Digital Board, is digital technology playing a significant role in improving the quality of education through introducing conceptual learning methods
The need to train our teachers in adopting and implementing these new teaching methodologies has been addressed through proposals on training in-service teachers leveraging e-learning and digital methods including the DIKSHA portal
A fund has been proposed with rupees one lakh crore to be allocated over the next 4 years to the Higher Education Financing Agency for the scheme titled Revitalizing Infrastructure in School Education (RISE). It is expected that a significant proportion of these funds will be used in digitising classrooms in public education institutes resulting in improved learning outcomes. These measures are expected to provide a level playing field to students from public institutions both in urban and rural areas as compared to select private education institutions already providing such facilities